


Ezra and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

by sheepfulsheepyard



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Blood and Injury, Hallucinations, Pre-Legacy, Screwy Mind Stuff, season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-04
Packaged: 2018-05-11 15:31:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5631661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheepfulsheepyard/pseuds/sheepfulsheepyard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sure, the fact that Ezra’s run into a gang war, been captured by Imperials, and crashed his ship on an uninhabitable planet is a pain, but Ezra can deal with that.</p>
<p>The hallucinations of his parents…not so much.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Much thanks to geekfairy on tumblr for the prompt, which was essentially what would cause Ezra break down in honest-to-god tears, since, as a character, he seems rather unlikely to do just that. I…don’t think I really lived up to that prompt. I still don’t like this ending and I kinda think I wrote myself into a corner: the situation seems so intense I thought it would take a lot more time to recover from this so it almost turned meta? Apologies in advance.

"This was _supposed_ to be a milk run," Kanan grumbled across the comm.

"Funny how whenever you say it's supposed to be a milk run, it's _never_ a milk run," Ezra managed to wheeze back, half-collapsed into the pilot's seat as he frantically tried to stabilize the shuddering, flaming freighter as it careened through Dantooine's atmosphere. 

This was just the topper to Ezra's wonderful last thirty-six hours. It had started with a solo mission to go ferret away supplies on Garel, which ended with Ezra accidentally stumbling into a gang war. After he'd gotten skimmed by a blaster blot while trying to avoid using his lightsaber, he'd then been taken captive by one of the gangs who didn't want him going to the authorities, Imperial or otherwise.

After Ezra was knocked out and dragged to a cell, he'd woken up eight hours later with a nasty bruise on his head and dried blood crusting around his right eye. That hadn't prevented him from escaping, naturally, but it had meant he was a little slow on the uptake when it came to gang members chasing him, so some crazy guy who had a religious opposition to blasters managed to put a vibroblade in his left shoulder. 

That _also_ hadn't prevented him from escaping, but it hadn't really improved his already fuzzy mind, and so he'd ended up running straight into the local Imperial authorities who were laying siege to the gang's holdout - a holdout that apparently _wasn't_ on Garel.

Straight into a barrage of blaster bolts - one of which ended up going straight through his right thigh.

Ezra had collapsed on the spot, thinking to himself that the day surely couldn't get any more worse from here, and, of course, he was dead wrong.

He woke up in Imperial custody.

Well, that was stretching it a little: the Imperials had obviously figured out that he wasn't a member of the gang but hadn't figured out that he was a Rebel, so they had brought him back to their command station, and actually cleaned and bound most of his wounds.

…which was when the doctor asked his name and so Ezra made a quick escape through the air vents, hindered by both his leg and shoulder, but _did_ manage to find his lightsaber and comm again. It was only after that did Ezra realize that he was actually on an _orbiting_ command station.

An orbiting command station under siege by pirates.

At that point, Ezra wistfully thought of how much he really didn't mind trying to ask Agent Kallus to strafe this entire planet. 

But, alas, he was a Jedi and not an Inquisitor, so he dutifully snuck aboard the pirate ship as they docked the Imperial command station, where he _also_ managed to knock out the pilots on board the freighter, jettison them in escape pods, disengage the ship from the station, and navigate through the space battle.

Alright, "navigate" wasn't so correct. After Ezra cleared most of the battle, about half of the freighter was on fire, the shields at zero percent, the entire cockpit blaring with alarms, and literally nothing working except the steering, air condition, and information readouts.

Now, Ezra was trying crash this ship as gently as possible onto on of the planet's continents.

"Dantooine," the computer helpfully informed him, "is an Outer Rim planet in the Raioballo sector. It is home to four large continents, but made uninhabitable by acid rain storms and poisonous seas. The atmosphere is breathable to humans and humanoid types. It has two moons - "

"Shut up, shut up," Ezra chanted under his breath, gripping the yoke as tightly while he steadied it as best he could; the freighter shuddering as it breached the planet's upper atmosphere. 

"Transmit us your coordinates," Hera ordered over the comm, "we're coming as fast as we can."

"Great," Ezra gritted his teeth. Why didn't he take Chopper along, again? He could've done this for him. "I'll do that as soon as I'm sure I'm not going to be a crater."

"You crash and you won't be able to," Hera warned, voice tightening, "if you don't do it before you crash, the equipment may be damaged."

"Well, it's on Dantooine," Ezra said, trying to keep breathing steadily as the ground was coming closer and closer. Good, ground and not poisonous sea. Stars, he could actually _die_ out here. Out of all the things that could've killed him, it would be a _ship crash?_ Not fair. 

"Hera," Ezra swallowed as he yanked the yolk, drawing the ship parallel to the ground, "I don't have that chance."

"Ezra!" Kanan's voice overrode Hera's on the comm, "don't worry about it, we'll track your position from your comm - keep the link open and use the Force. Let it guide you!"

Ezra wrestled the urge to shout at Kanan to shut up, but he reached out to the warmth inside him, blocking out the blinking red lights, roaring sirens, and the rest of the _Ghost_ screaming for his attention, Hera shouting advice and Kanan begging him to focus on the Force. 

A supernatural calm settled over him as he gave the yolk a gentle lift upward before the underside of the freighter caught on the ground and in a shower of sparks and overturned dirt, the ship slammed to the ground, skidded to a halt, teetered, and then collapsed on its side. 

Ezra was thrown from his seat and hit the very solid durasteel wall of the cockpit - he felt his injured shoulder crumple beneath as he basically landed on his neck, his head slamming into a panel of buttons, switches, and other sharp things. Laying on his side, stunned, Ezra saw wires sparking above his head and stars blooming across his eyes.

"Hey, guys," Ezra coughed. _Oh, great,_ he thought dazedly. _That's blood._ "Did I mention I got the only ship with supplies?"

And then everything went black.

* * *

 

"Ezra!"

"What," Ezra slurred. He was so _comfortable_ \- wouldn't Kanan just let him sleep? Wait…actually, he _wasn't_ comfortable. Had he gone to bed on a rock pile? "G'way."

"Ezra," Ezra vaguely heard five voices sigh with relief - oh, wait, that was his comm. And he'd survived - survived what was probably one of the most irritating days of his life. Or was it two days, now?

With a groan, Ezra managed to push himself into a sitting position. He gingerly touched his head and grimaced when it came away bloody. Two concussions in about as many days. Fantastic.

"Ezra," Kanan demanded, "what's going on?"

"What."

"Are you hurt? Specter Six, Ezra, keep talking!"

"Well, stop talking so I can talk," Ezra snapped back irritably. _Ouch,_ why did he have to land on his head?

"Status!" Hera agreed sharply.

"Um…" Ezra looked over himself. Hm. All limbs, fingers, and toes still attached. Whoever had bound up his leg had done a good job of it, but the shoulder that had taken a knife through it was bleeding again. It was also probably broken. Awesome. Not very blood much, though, which was good, but his side which had been skimmed by a blaster felt like it was on _fire._

One of his eyes was swelling up with a black eye thanks to an admittedly good right hook from a pirate. His back was aching from where he'd been shoved into crates and it looked like any bare skin was littered with tiny cuts from the glass whatever that the other pirate had broken over his head. Oh, right, it was his _third_ head injury in…how many days, now?

Oh, and there was what was looking like a few broken ribs from his graceful swan dive into the side of the ship.

But nothing that urgently needed to be taken care of. Probably.

"Meh," Ezra said, squinting at the other wall, which was suspiciously blurry. Was that one of his multiple head injuries or the blood in his eyes? "I'm pretty good."

There was an audible sigh of relief across all four comm channels.

"Alright," Hera said, her voice sounding steadier than Ezra had heard in the past couple of hours. "We're tracking your location and about to enter hyperspace. It should be a thirty-minute jump, give or take. Are there gasses or liquids leaking in the ship?"

Ezra craned his neck, really unwilling to move from his current position. He wasn't sure if his leg would collapse, his chest would give out, or he'd pass out from blood loss if he got up. 

"Yeah," Ezra said, "one of the ceiling panels is busted and there's some sort of smoke. No liquids that I can see."

"You need to get out," Hera said urgently, "it could be poisonous or something else."

"I don't think I can," Ezra said, clutching his side as he tried to stand up on one leg clutching the side of the cockpit for support. Everything had gone dark, except for the occasional loose wire sparking or snapping and the information panel, which was still reciting Dantooine's fauna. It was hard to reorient himself with the ship on its side; the floor and ceiling were now the sides of the ship, but he managed to get a solid look outside the transparisteel viewport. "It's - yep, it's raining acid outside."

He heard Sabine give a low whistle. "Only _you,_ Ezra Bridger."

Ezra grinned weakly as he managed to limp to the door of the cockpit, using only one leg and arm for support, "You haven't even heard half of it."

"Well, try to open the door or use a gas mask," Hera advised, nervousness once again curling her voice. "We'll be there soon."

The comm crackled as they shot into hyperspace.

Ezra let out a breath as he successfully jimmied open the cockpit door. But as soon as he did, he was faced with a wall of that pale, white smoke. He wasn't going to get anywhere through that. Ezra shut the door immediately and groaned as he saw a few tendrils sneak in.

"It's only gonna get better from here," sighed Ezra.

* * *

 

Propped up against the back of one of the seats, Ezra carefully stretched out his injured leg as he carefully undid part of his flightsuit to glimpse at his left shoulder.

Ezra groaned when he saw it. The bandages were completely soaked through with blood, bleeding through his flightsuit, making the stick to each other. Ezra lifted part of the bandages and tried not to curse. What wasn't drenched in blood or dyed pink from it was an ugly purplish-red and swollen. So it _was_ broken. Even better - his stitches seemed to have ripped.

"Huh," Ezra said aloud, the edges of his voice tinged with a sort of hilarity, "wonder why I didn't notice that before." 

Then he giggled.

That was when Ezra knew, with a sinking certainty, that something was really, really wrong.

Ezra shivered, biting his lip and clenching down on the irrepressible urge to burst out laughing. It was getting cold and Ezra tried to focus on that, carefully tucking one arm around his waist, trying not to jostle anything. He tried to focus on the static coming from this still-open comm line. He even tried to focus on the pain that was wearing through the fog of adrenaline or shock or whatever.

It wasn't working. Ezra clenched his teeth together, but couldn't help but let out breathy little giggles here and there, wrestling down the pain in his chest and trying to take deep breaths through what was something really, really not good.

Even as he tried, it felt like icy fingers were racing up and down his spine, making him twitch and curse every time he did. Whatever hilarity the gas or shock had conjured up was slowly being replaced with bone-deep fear.

There was a sudden shriek and Ezra wrenched around to face the cockpit viewport, nearly giving himself whiplash.

"Who's there?" Ezra called before he could stop himself. He breathed out, slowly, and turned back around, focusing on playing the comm in his hands and grabbing his lightsaber immediately like his instincts were screaming at him to do.

"It's just the wind," Ezra said out loud the empty cockpit. It was already dark inside without lights, the storm making it darker, and even the hissing of gas and the computer's droning had stopped. All that was there was Ezra and the crackle of the comm.

Ezra took another breath and focused on his breath swirling around in the air. When he'd been a kid and first out on the streets he'd been scared as well and thought he'd heard things that weren't really there. Dantooine was uninhabited - this wasn't any different.

"Yes," corrected another voice, "it is different."    

Ezra choked, gripping the comm tighter as he slowly looked up only to be faced with a very familiar face.

His own.

* * *

 

The other Ezra - the fake Ezra - crouched down near Ezra.

"Right," Ezra said, refusing to give into the panic building in his chest or even reach for his lightsaber. "I'm definitely hallucinating."

The confirmation that it was just hallucinations should have made him feel better. It didn't.

Fake Ezra tilted his head, smiling a smile Ezra recognized on himself: his secretive, I'm-about-to-get-away-with-something grin. Ezra focused on other things - like that his double was wearing dark blue robes over tastefully coordinated breeches and tunic made from fine material.

"Are you _sure_ about that?" Fake Ezra asked.

"Definitely," Ezra said, trying to ignore the fact that what Fake Ezra was wearing something he'd seen his father wear far too many times beforehand. "Only in a crazy dream could I wear something so weird."

Ezra resisted the urge to grab his lightsaber. He was _not_ going to be crazily slicing everything in the ship to pieces when Kanan and the rest showed up. Besides they were, what, fifteen minutes away? He could handle this. He could. 

"Are you _sure_?" Fake Ezra repeated. "After all, you couldn't _handle_ saving your parents. What makes you think you can handle this?"

Ezra sucked in a breath so sharp it hurt his chest. He didn't answer. He couldn't think of an appropriate response. Instead, he glared at the wall behind Fake Ezra and clutched the comm tighter, listening to the sounds of static.

"Use the Force. You know I'm real."

"Force says you're a liar," Ezra snapped back immediately, not looking at the doppelgänger. He drew up one leg to his chest and wished he could do the same with the other. "'Sides, what would you know about lying? You look like some sort of rich kid I would steal stuff from. If you were real."

"Rich kid," he heard the copy repeat before his entire field of vision was filled with his own face. Ezra jerked back, but the chair and his leg prevented him from moving anywhere. 

"Or, maybe," Fake Ezra suggested with a smile, "an Ezra Bridger who managed to save his parents."

Ezra clenched his jaw and looked away. He wasn't going to be intimidated by some self-important hallucination of himself. Even as Ezra told himself that, he felt like his entire chest was crumpling inwards.

"Shut up," managed Ezra. 

"All you can say?" the other asked contemptuously as he straightened, then smoothed out his robes like some sort of pompous, well-to-do upper class kid. Or a jackass. "I would wager you wouldn't be able to say anything at all if you were there that night."

Before Ezra could protest, or curse, or _something,_ Fake Ezra was gone. 

Ezra closed his eyes and let out a shaky breath. Petty insults. Whatever, he could deal with those. They didn't mean anything. This was just some weird dream by not enough blood, water, or food.

Almost as soon as he thought it, he heard a knock on the door.

Ezra stared blankly for a moment before he touched his comm.

"Kanan…?" he asked, hesitant, before a sudden voice overrode him.

"Mira!" called his dad, "you're home, and just in time for dinner!"

Ezra froze, his heart almost beating out of his chest, as his eyes darted from side to side. He couldn't see a thing. There was no Fake Dad like there was a Fake Ezra. Just his voice.

"Ephraim," his mom greeted and Ezra didn't _need_ to see anything, he could see it himself: his mother kissed his father on the cheek as he opened the door, right before Ezra ran to her, almost tripping on one of his toys, before she would pick him up and say - 

"Hello there, my little prince!" Ezra heard Mom exclaim and he tried to cover his ears, but ended up barely stifling a shout of pain as he tried to move his broken arm. "What did _you_ do today? Did you rule your kingdom well?"

Ezra heard his younger self laugh and had to bite down on his own tongue to stop himself from crying.

"It was great! I counted to _five hundred_ today, Mama - and Aj and I played knights and monsters - I was the knight 'n I saved Yindy from the monster, it was so _cool_ \- "

Ezra shuddered and choked down a shout or a sob or something more like a scream. His chest was heaving, making everything ache and he was pressing as far as he could into the back of the chair, clutching his shoulder to keep in place; his teeth were chattering and he looked around, desperate to find a way get out, to make it stop, to cover his ears, to cover his eyes, _anything_ to make it stop.

There was nothing and it didn't stop.

"Hold on," Dad interrupted, "there's someone else at the door. Mira, the table's all set if you'd like to start with Ezra. I'll answer it."

It would never stop.

"Alright, but don't take too long!" Mom called, her cheery voice fading away, "I know how you like to talk!"

His comm dug so tight into his hand that it broke skin and he bled more blood than he had to spare. 

Ezra's breaths were coming out in short pants now and as he raised a shaking hand, he realized he was crying - as he wiped the tears away with his one good hand, he instead left streaks of blood.

"Hello," Dad answered the door, sounding pleasant before transforming to bemusement, "Stormtroopers? What's going on?"

"No."

It took Ezra a moment to realize that that was him who said that, his voice barely above a whisper, catching and stumbling over the word before breaking. 

"No," Ezra whispered and he was definitely crying now; everything was blurry from the tears in his eyes that were wetting the dried blood and he didn't care if he was injured, he had to move, he had to get _out_ of here. 

Ezra staggered to his feet, one breath after another catching in his chest as blaster fire echoed through the tiny cockpit - he stumbled around the side of the chair before his leg couldn't take the weight anymore and he collapsed underneath the control panel. He curled up as best he could with a shot leg and broken arm while more rounds rang in his ears and in the pause between the shots he heard his mother say shakily, "Stay here, Ezra, and whatever you do, don't move - you'll be safe, I promise!"

Ezra sobbed as he tucked himself further into the space.

The firing hadn't stopped yet.

Ezra didn't move. 

"No?" and Ezra bit down so hard on his lip it bled to avoid jumping in surprise. "Ezra, what's _no_?"

"Kanan?" Ezra croaked, sounding ragged even to his own ears. He flinched as he heard his mother scream. 

"Yes, it's me! Ezra, what's going on?" Kanan demanded, but Ezra couldn't answer with anything other than a sob as he heard the stormtroopers bark orders to each other. "Ezra, you've been repeating _no_ for the past minute! What's _happening_?"

Ezra shook his head - he was shaking all over, shuddering and trembling and barely able to breathe, much less actually respond, but, wait - no, he was actually saying "no," and he could hear his own fear reverberate around him as much as he could hear the sounds of the stormtroopers overturning everything in the house, setting fire to documents, breaking open rooms, but he couldn't hear Mom or Dad anymore. 

He took a shaking breath as he quivered, covering his mouth with his hand like it might actually make him stop sobbing or make him remember that this wasn't real or make him tell Kanan what was happening.

It didn't and Ezra didn't care whether or not it was real - it _felt_ real and he couldn't do anything clutch the comm tighter.

"Ezra, _talk_ to me!" Kanan was roaring and, finally, Ezra managed to gasp out, "I can hear them."

The comm went silent except for Kanan's breathing and so did the cockpit. There was no one breathing in Ezra's mind except for the stormtroopers.

"Who, Ezra?" Kanan asked, his voice far more gentle. 

"All clear," announced a stormtrooper. "Move out."

Ezra shook his head again; he was shaking again or maybe he was just still shaking. He didn't want to say anything and he didn't want to move - his eyes flickered back and forth from the cockpit, silver with mist, and the comm in Ezra's hand.

" _Them_ ," Ezra choked out, tremors racking his body as he just kept sobbing, fighting for breath.

"Your parents?" Kanan asked, voice impossibly soft.

Ezra couldn't say anymore. He had run out of breath, he had run out of tears, he had run out of blood - he just sat there, clutching the comm, slippery with blood, close to his chest as he wept, shutting his eyes so as not to see when he wished he could stop hearing.

It was then that the doors were wrenched back with a crash and Ezra jerked up, pressing himself further into his hiding spot, but light poured into the cockpit and, suddenly, Kanan was there.

"C'mon, Ezra," he said as he knelt next to Ezra. "Let's take you home."


	2. Chapter 2

To Kanan, it was rather unsurprising that after being sent out to fetch supplies, Ezra Bridger would wind up missing for over twenty-four hours and then end up on a planet the next system over.

Sure, things like that would probably give him a heart attack one day, but it wouldn't be a _surprising_ heart attack. 

It was even less surprising to hear Ezra report in his being "pretty good" after a day-long romp around the galaxy which, judging from Ezra's vague reports and what clues the _Ghost_ crew had scrounged from Garel, involved at least one gang war and several Imperials. And now he was stuck in a gas-filled ship while it was pouring down acid outside.

"Get the medkit ready and grab some gas masks," Kanan muttered to Sabine while Hera prepped the _Ghost_ for hyperspace, "and maybe the stretcher, too."

Sabine nodded and departed as the _Ghost_ made its jump, the star turning into streaks. Kanan stood up, ready to look for a job to distract himself with. A thirty minute journey wasn't going to benefit Kanan's already taut nerves. 

It passed quickly enough, though, between the hunt for the gas masks and Sabine's double- and triple-checking the medkit. The _Ghost_ shuddered with reentry into realspace, and Hera's voice echoed across the _Ghost's_ intercom as Sabine, Zeb, and Kanan stood ready in the cargo bay, Kanan already trying to raise Ezra on his comm.

"We're coming up on Ezra's location and it looks like the rain has stopped," Hera reported, "ship's on its side, so be ready to have to cut through the bulwark."

"Got it, Specter Two," Sabine agreed on the comm when Kanan suddenly shushed her.

" - no," Ezra was saying, voice shaking, "no," his breath hitched before it settled back down again, "no!"

"Ezra," Kanan said steadily, making an obvious effort to be calm, "Ezra, answer me. What's happening?"

Sabine and Zeb exchanged uneasy glances as Ezra continued, unheeded, "No… _no, no_ …no…"

"Is there someone there?" Zeb suggested in a low tone as Sabine unholstered her blasters.

"He may be hurt," Sabine offered while Kanan fruitlessly tried to get Ezra to respond. "While we were in hyperspace. A serious injury could've sent him into shock."

"Ezra!" Kanan demanded over the sound of the _Ghost_ entering the upper atmosphere. "What's _no_?"

There was a pause long enough to make Zeb growl and Kanan clench his jaw before a soft: "…Kanan?"

"Yes, it's me," Kanan half-yelled. Sabine let out a sigh of relief that her helmet's vocoder didn't pick up. "Ezra, what's going on?"

There was another pause, broken only by Ezra's fractured breathing.

"Ezra," Kanan repeated, his voice softening, but his entire body was hamstrung from stress. "You've been repeated _no_ for the past minute. What's _happening_? Are you hurt, is someone there?"

Sabine flinched at the sound of Ezra restarting his mantra of _no_ , somehow still able to hear it with startling clarity over the _Ghost_ starting its landing sequence. Even more clear was the sound of a stifled sob despite Kanan yelling into the comm, desperately trying to get a response.

"I - I can - " Ezra sounded like he was fighting a losing battle, struggling for words or, maybe, the lucidity to _form_ words before he wheezed out, almost too soft to hear, "I can hear them."

"Who can you hear, Ezra?" Kanan demanded, but no response came, just the same, splintered breathing that rasped over the comm, jagged edges scraping against the dead air of the cargo bay, crying for help against an enemy only Ezra could hear. 

Kanan asked again and again but Ezra didn't answer. Finally, softening his voice, Kanan asked, one last time as the cargo bay door opened, "Who, Ezra?"

" _Them_ ," Ezra stressed, his voice stretched enough to snap in two. 

Kanan seemed to understand before Zeb and Sabine did, because he answered, "Your parents?"

Ezra didn't answer, but that was answer enough. Kanan clasped the comm tightly in his hand before he broke into a run out of the _Ghost,_ Sabine and Zeb following behind, barely weighed down by the medkit and stretcher respectively, the latter of which Zeb dropped at the base of Ezra's wrecked freighter.

Kanan leapt up in a single bound, beginning to cut a circle into the side of the ship with his lightsaber. Sabine and Zeb scrambled up as Kanan did so, Sabine handing both a gas mask.

"Let me go first," Sabine recommended. "My helmet's a lot more durable then those flimsy things."

Kanan nodded his assent, slicing the piece in half and kicking it in. It landed on the bottom of the freighter with a loud crash, obviously breaking something, but the three couldn't see anything. White plumes of gas wafted into the air from the ship; sunlight illuminated the gas inside, but it was so thick it looked like a cloud had been stuffed into the freighter. 

Sabine jumped down first, flipping down the eyepiece on her mask, locating the two things she thought she would: a mostly sealed cockpit door and a leaking gas line labelled RYLLRIM.

"Well, now we know why Ezra's a mess," Sabine announced as Zeb and Kanan landed next to her. "You see that, ryllrim? It comes from a type of ryll and it can be used for coolant on certain ships, but the Empire will distill it and use it in combination with truth drugs, because too long of exposure to ryllrim in its pure form will make people start experiencing audiovisual hallucinations and ramp up their emotions."

"And how long is too long?" Zeb asked, voice muffled through his gas mask as Kanan got to work on the door of the cockpit. Kanan seemed to trust her judgement that Ezra wouldn't have moved from the cockpit if there was all this gas around. 

"About five minutes," Sabine said bluntly. "And Ezra's been here for about an hour now. We're lucky he isn't dead."

Kanan made short work of the door and soon enough the three were standing in the cockpit. Kanan cautiously stepped inside, taking the spare gas mask off of his belt. 

"Ezra?" he called, voice echoing oddly both off the cockpit walls and, he realized, an open comm line. Kanan ducked his head and carefully navigated around the pilot's chairs, moving towards the front and large display panels of buttons where the rasp of breathing and the comm was coming from. Sure enough, Kanan could see a leg sticking out the spare space between the navigational display and the floor.

"Ezra, it's Kanan," he said, kneeling down, words slow and placating, "I'm here with Sabine and Zeb and we're going to take you back to the _Ghost,_ okay?"

It was dark in the cockpit, even darker with Ezra half-curled in his corner, and it soon became clear to Kanan that he wasn't going to be able to coax him out of his hideyhole, so he simply reached in grasped Ezra around the waist, tugging him out gently, trying to ignore what were clearly Ezra's sobs interspersing a few quiet _no_ s. 

But soon after Kanan had finally extracted Ezra from his hiding spot did it become clear that those tears were, mostly likely, not only from pure hallucinations.

Zeb cursed. Kanan felt, rather than heard, Sabine tense.

"C'mon, Ezra," Kanan said much more lightly than he felt, "Let's take you home."

* * *

 

Apparently, what Ezra Bridger deemed "pretty good" was different from the rest of the galaxy. This became very clear during the hyperspace jump the crew of the _Ghost_ had made to _Phoenix Home,_ desperate for a proper medbay.

What with Ezra's shot leg, stabbed and broken arm, the multiple hits he had taken to head that left his hair plastered to his face with dried blood, sweat, and tears, the numerous bleeding cuts and fist-shaped bruise over his eye, _and_ the purple blossoming up and down his sides and back from the amount of time he'd been thrown around, it was a sheer miracle Ezra hadn't yet passed out from the pain.

Instead he sat up on the stretcher, leaning against the bulkhead, head in his hands and quite obviously sobbing, ignoring Sabine's attempts to try and clean the cuts on his face of transparisteel. 

Kanan shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortable and uneasy as he stood next to Ezra, hand on his shoulder, in what was, admittedly, a poor attempt at comfort. 

All of the _Ghost_ crew had, at one point or another, broken down. Maybe after a mission gone wrong, maybe after seeing something too close to home - sometimes it involved tears, sometimes it didn't.

Ezra had never been one to cry, but now he didn't seem like he was planning on stopping on anytime in the foreseeable future.

_I wish Hera was here,_ Kanan thought, _she'd know what to do_. As soon as he thought, Hera burst into the cargo bay almost skipping the ladder entirely in her haste to get down, Chopper following behind her and squawking irritably.

She skidded to a stop in front of Ezra, dropping to her knees so she could get a look at his face. But almost as soon as Hera caught sight of Ezra's tears (and Ezra quickly ducked his head back down) her head whipped towards Kanan in what, he was realizing with a sinking feeling, was definitely her silently asking him for help.

So everyone was officially clueless as to what do to help Ezra. So that meant it was time for someone to start pretending they did know what to do.

Kanan cleared his throat and dropped down beside Ezra. He went to loop an arm around Ezra's shoulders, remembered that he had an injury, and so instead put his hand on Ezra's shoulder. Following his lead, Zeb collapsed with a groan on Ezra's other side and, uncaring of Ezra's shoulder, threw an arm over Ezra's shoulder. Kanan opened his mouth to tell Zeb to quit it, but before he could say anything, he was interrupted.

"That _hurts_ ," Ezra hissed, or at least tried to, but with his scratchy voice, red eyes, and stuffed nose, he sounded more like a wounded tooka than a fierce Jedi. Kanan met Hera's weak smile with one of his own. Trust Ezra to rise to any challenge from Zeb no matter what.

"Then you should've let Sabine bandage your shoulder," Zeb retorted with a shrug. Ezra seemed to consider this for a moment before then moving into a more comfortable position, not bothering to respond, and shrinking against Zeb until he looked something like a fourth of his size. Zeb turned his attention to Hera. "So, where did you say the Rebellion was planning to put its next base?"

Hera looked momentarily surprised at being addressed before she responded, casting a wary eye at Ezra, "Well, ideally, the Rebellion'd build on an uninhabited planet, but they don't have the resources to support themselves on a planet that doesn't have an easy food source."

"Right now, it'd probably be best to just keep the fleet deep in space somewhere," Sabine added, settling down next to Hera as Chopper, loudly complaining about ladders and organics in general, took Hera's other side. "Fuel costs would go up, but the farther we go into the Outer Rim, the more likely it is we're going to end up in Hutt space, and we don't need to be sold out by overgrown slugs."

Kanan immediately voiced his disdain for anything Rebellion-related, got glared at by Hera, and an argument ensued; chatter shifted to mundane matters, Chopper's latest mischief, and Kanan's newest passive-aggressive stand off with Rex that had quickly turned into an aggressive stand off. 

There was a quiet snuffling and everyone turned to Ezra who, couched between Kanan and Zeb, was fast asleep, head pillowed on Kanan's shoulder.

"He's gonna need a couple days in a bacta tank, that's for sure," Sabine commented, quiet enough Ezra didn't stir. "But whoever cleaned his wounds did a good job. He's stable and should be lucky he's got a hard head. Once the gas is out of his system, he'll be okay. I think," she added under her breath, sounding younger than she had in years.

Hera put a hand on her shoulder. "He'll be physically fine eventually. As for everything else, we'll help him get through it. We're here and we'll always be."

"Great job of that we did," Zeb grunted. "Couldn't even make him stop crying."

"He moves at his own pace," Hera corrected gently, "we've got to let him cry when he needs to. We can't protect him from his past or make him move past it," her flickered to Kanan, "we can only help him in the present."

"It's a start to a long process," Kanan said quietly. "Whatever he saw, drugged out of his mind, I'm sure we haven't seen the end of it. Hera's right," Kanan sighed, but his mouth quirked in a bit of a smile, "like she always is. We just have to be here, where Ezra needs us."

And even as Hera wiped his face of blood and grime with a damp cloth and Sabine bandaged his wounds, Kanan and Zeb soothing (in their own way) as Ezra twitched and mumbled with pain, Ezra slept on.


End file.
